Monkey Business

Can you take a wild guess at who that monkey is?

Monkey Business from Ryan Rasmussen on Vimeo.

Benson Bash 2011

I come from a large family as most of you know and currently we are scattered everywhere from California to London and Chicago to Houston but for the past 3 years or so we have been lucky to get everyone together once during the year. It started with my Dad's graduation from MBA school and now has become our own reunion. I guess our family has grown old enough to have those. Anyhow, this year was great.... and CRAZY. I have posted about all the babies that were born (5 boys Noah's age) and then the next round of 6 new ones. So all in all we had 15 grandkids 7 and under but of that 15, 11 are 2 and under. It was toddler town. I guess I should start at the beginning...

The drive to Utah.


Thanks to Grandma Rhonda (who rode along for most of the way only to turn around and ride right back home), Jacob and Deidre (who let us crash at their house there and back, sorry about the futon!) and two good boys. This is what we saw most of the time.

Once we got to Utah the cousins got right down to the nitty-gritty of getting aquainted... fighting over who gets to play with Lighting McQueen and who get Buzz Lightyear.  We has our fair share of toddler squabbles while the boys figured out the pecking order. But for the most part they got along fabulously.... as you can see...

This is Andy and Noah catching up

J.Will impressed us all with his flexibility while welcoming Charlotte to the family by tickling her nose with his foot (She didn't seem to mind)

Park time was great lots of races in between trees and around the trees

The Ipad was a big hit... Monster at the End of this Book was a crowd favorite. (Luke, Russell, Noah & Andy)

Luke and Madison played house. Madison was the baby in the crib and Luke played the part of a very competent father tipping the crib over to get the baby out of it. This got old quick and so they moved onto dress-ups. Madison was Cinderella (sorry no picture) and Luke wore his "man-dress". 

This might have led Ryan to question the wisdom of letting me take the boys.

Russell and Noah shared some good times at Bridal Veil Falls thanks to Uncle Mike for chasing them around!

We hit the Springville pool. I had never been there before but it was awesome. Who knew?  It was perfect.

Some adults lounging the toddler end watching the kiddos play. Others played hoops at the opposite end.

The water slide was a big hit... even with the little ones. Luke may have manipulated multiple aunts and uncles to take him on them while I tended to little Charlie. Thank you all!

Even Charlotte enjoyed the outing and I enjoyed dressing her up in a little swimsuit. (Why are the hats always so big for such a little suit? Or do I have pinheads for kids?)

With more swimming, lots of popcicles and great weather the weekend flew by. Noah may have lost a popcicle or two in the pool but somehow he would come back with a new one.



Luke ventured into the bouncy house for a bit and loved it.



All in all it was a fabulous trip. So much fun to see everyone together. It made me wish we all lived closer to each other. Maybe someday. For now we are looking forward to Benson Bash 2012... and looking for a compound/cabin/ranch that could hold us all under one roof.


Last but not least I need to thank my sweet grandma and grandpa for letting me and the kids crash at their house for a week.



I loved the opportunity to visit with them daily. What a blessing they have been in my life and still are. I have been blessed with wonderful family from top to bottom!

End Of Summer? Not in Visalia!

Summertime Fun from Ryan Rasmussen on Vimeo.

Less than 30 minutes after the pool, these two were zonked

And a special thanks to the Burkinshaws for helping us with

our family christmas card! Never too early...

Treading Water

So it has been awhile since I posted... I will provide you a little recap of our last month.

Charlotte was born on June 17th (see previous post) with in the next week we had found a place to rent in Visalia, moved to a new house. What a whirlwind. It is not your ideal week of post-childbirth recovery or ideal first week of life (Sorry Charlie!) but we made and lived to tell the tale. I have to say that there is NO possible way we could have done this without my wonderful mother. She came to help out with the baby and we put her to work! She helped us pack, move, drive, clean, unpack, clean up the yard ... to mention a few things. She gets Best Mom of the Year award, hands down.

We did take time amid the craziness to get some pictures of Charlotte after her bath one day...

She is about a week old here..

Luke and Noah are very good big brothers to her and anxious to get in on the picture taking.


Anyhow it is now a month later and I have a few random boxes still to unpack, more than a few pictures to hang and other organizing to do but for the most part we are here! We are really liking Visalia and adjusting to the heat. (It was only 90 deg. last week and it felt nice and cool to me.) There are 3 other guys that Ryan works with who just moved here with their families and 3 of the 4 of us are in the same ward! It has been fun to have someone who is in the same situation to hang out with. I am sure they will all make it onto our blog at some point.

The search for a rental house here was crazy... because there was nothing out there that fit our criteria. We were really blessed to find this house. It is in a great neighborhood, is big enough for us all and room for some visitors... hint, hint, hint! And last but definitely not least it has a pool. As you can see Luke and Noah are loving it!

Who doesn't love a good splash?

Luke a bit more cautious than Noah but still loves the water and likes learning to swim.

Noah is scary, in that he has no fear. Give him a set of floaties and you can't keep him on the steps. He just kicks his way all around the pool.

Biscuit likes the pool too. I have caught him taking a dip to cool off during the day. He loves to jump in and join the fun if you let him.

We did have Lee & Rhonda up for the 4th of July/Ryan's birthday/to help out with the kids. It was a lot of fun. We went to Exeter and checked out the 4th of July celebration.

We didn't last long... it hit 100 degrees at like 10am and that was too hot for us!

The boys were ready to cool off after a half hour!

The next day for Ryan's birthday we hit In n' Out and then went and saw Cars 2.

Don't know what Luke was more excited about... holding all the tickets (a very important job) or seeing the new movie!

I will leave you with a couple more pictures of little Charlie. She is growing up so fast. I forget how quick they get big. I love her hair and am hoping and praying that it doesn't fall out!



We are off next week to Utah for a get together with all my siblings... sure to be a weekend of Benson-mania!

She's Here

Luke and Noah would like to announce the birth of their sister!

Charlotte Rasmussen
7 lbs. 8 oz.
1:38 pm
June 17, 2011

Thanks to Grandpa, the boys were taken care of while Mom and Charlotte were in the hospital. We are so glad he was here to help and the boys are always glad to play with their Grandpa whatever the reason.


Due to fact we are moving to Visalia tomorrow this will be a short post. When we get settled a bit I will post more pictures of Charlotte. You'll have to take my word for it she is as cute as a button and we are soooooooo glad to have her here.

Yesterweek

Yesterweek = any time in the past that you can't quite quantify.

This is Luke's go-to term when talking about the past. I think it is going to catch on. A lot has happened in the past month most of which was not documented on film... thank goodness. We had a rash of the flu over our anniversary/ mother's day weekend. We should have known. Ryan has been battling a kidney stone that he had to have surgically lasered. Noah broke his foot slipping of the curb. (Luckily no cast was needed.) Luke turned 3 years old. And me? I have made it to the point of having less that one month left of pregnancy, battling swollen ankles, tiredness and panic about what I am going to do with 3. But enough griping from me. Let's see the highlights...

Luke's birthday was on a Sunday so we celebrated two days. Saturday we went to Gilroy Gardens. We had heard about it and that it was great for kids so we decided to try it out. It was perfect for our family. They had tons of little rides that the kids could go on and/or one of us could go with them.

The carousel: always a favorite.

I love this picture because you try so hard to get a nice smiling picture of your kids and 90% of the time I get a variation of this.... but I remember being a kid and getting fed up with parents wanting you to pose and hold still and smile and so I am sure I have a couple of pictures that look like this.

For those of you who don't know, Gilroy is a huge garlic producer. They have garlic everything and so I, being a lover of garlic, thought that I would try their garlic fries. They were not what I expected. There was like a one to one garlic to potato ratio.

I had garlic breath for days and didn't make it through them all. So warning to anyone trying the garlic fries at Gilroy Gardens, caution lots of garlic.

The next day we dressed the boys up in these suits that Ryan found online. He loves seersucker suits. I have always been skeptical of them, but when we got the boys all dressed up I had to admit they looked pretty dang cute.


All they need are top hats and canes to look more dapper.


Kudos to Ryan and is impeccable fashion sense. I doubt over and over but am constantly proven wrong. You think I kid but that is the truth.

After church we made Luke take a nap before presents. It was one of the world's shortest naps. Here is the anxious birthday boy awaiting the loot...

He was not disappointed. Later we had some friends over for cake and ice cream. Luke has a little trouble blowing out the candles... no wonder look at his form...


Once we got that straightened out thing went along quicker...

Let's just say each candle got some individual attention.

Happy birthday little man!

Warm Weather Fun

It has been really warm lately and so the boys and I have been busy enjoying the sun and warmth.
Especially after my recent trip to Idaho where I woke up to this:
Beautiful and charming in January, not so much in May.

We tried the San Jose zoo this week. Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. It was pretty good. Although all you Idahoans will be glad to know that the zoo park doesn't hold a candle to Tautphaus Park.
There were very few animals but for Luke the little rides made up for the lack of cool animals to look at. He LOVED the rides. I think he got my appreciation for a good roller coaster.

Mostly we have been hanging out in the backyard because I am too hot and tired to do anything else. I count it as multi-tasking: watering the lawn (b/c something is wrong with the sprinklers), exercising Biscuit (running away from the boys) and bath time. Some may just call it lazy but you be the judge.

It starts out like this:
nice cooperative play with a little water..

soon it has progressed to this:

... no clothes, more water, still lots of fun...

Usually this is the end:
Me inside escaping the water, the boys fighting over who holds the hose and Biscuit begging for mercy.